This Shabbat, we will celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of Adam Kopf. In addition to sending out a big Mazel Tov to Adam, his parents Jennifer and Robert and older sister Natalie, we also commend him for taking on such a difficult Torah portion.
This week’s Torah portion Tazria, and its sister portion, Metzora, that we will read next week, are without a doubt the most challenging in all the Torah. They deal with blood and guts, disease and mold, the types of topics that often send rabbis running off to remote destinations to escape having to write sermons on them. And, yet, Adam, joins a collective of countless other young Jews who willingly take on this task every year.
For a Bar or Bat Mitzvah student who has chosen this arduous task they have three choices for how to proceed: ignore the challenging sections, challenge the challenging sections, or reimagine the challenging sections. This is not just true for this week and next week’s portions, but for each Torah portion. The beauty of Jewish tradition is that it is over four thousand years old. The challenge of Jewish tradition is that it is over four thousand years old. Much has changed in Judaism and the world in that time. But instead of being daunted by the task, we should feel invigorated. This is exactly what Jews have been doing with our sacred texts since the words were first put on the page. It is the basis of our commentary and the heart of almost everything we do. We make sense of what is incomprehensible. Mazel Tov to Adam and his family for embracing this tall task. We look forward to hearing his unique interpretation of this section of Torah on Shabbat morning.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex